+++++++Deep below our violences,
Quite still, like our First Dad, his watch
+++++++And many little maids,
But the boneless winds that blow
+++++++Round law-court and temple
Recall to Metropolis
+++++++That Pliocene Friday when,
At His holy insufflation
+++++++(Had He picked a teleost
Or an arthropod to inspire,
+++++++Would our death also have come?),
Our bubble-brained creature said—
+++++++“I am loved, therefore I am”—:
And well by now might the lion
+++++++Be lying down with the kid,
Had he stuck to that logic.

+++++++Winds make weather; weather
Is what nasty people are
+++++++Nasty about and the nice
Show a common joy in observing:
+++++++When I seek an image
For our Authentic City
+++++++(Across what brigs of dread,
Down what gloomy galleries,
+++++++Must we stagger or crawl
Before we may cry—O look!?),
+++++++I see old men in hallways
Tapping their barometers,
+++++++Or a lawn over which,
The first thing after breakfast,
+++++++A paterfamilias
Hurries to inspect his rain-gauge.

Goddess of winds and wisdom,
+++++++When, on some windless day
Of dejection, unable
+++++++To name or to structure,
Your poet with bodily tics,
+++++++Scratching, tapping his teeth,
Tugging the lobe of an ear,
+++++++Unconsciously invokes You,
Show Your good nature, allow
+++++++Rooster or whistling maid
To fetch him Arthur O’Bower;
+++++++Then, if moon-faced Nonsense,
That erudite forger, stalk
+++++++Through the seven kingdoms,
Set Your poplars a-shiver
+++++++To warn Your clerk lest he
Die like an Old Believer
+++++++For some spurious reading:
And in all winds, no matter
+++++++Which of Your twelve he may hear,
Equinox gales at midnight
+++++++Howling through marram grass,
Or a faint susurration
+++++++Of pines on a cloudless
Afternoon in midsummer,
+++++++Let him feel You present,
That every verbal rite
+++++++May be fittingly done,
And done in anamnesis
+++++++Of what is excellent
Yet a visible creature,
+++++++Earth, Sky, a few dear names.